POLLUTION Contaminated Cargo

POLLUTION Contaminated Cargo

The 32-car train, carrying 2,400 tons of contaminated dirt, left Michigan nearly a month ago. Eight states later, it's still looking for a landfill. Like the New York garbage barge that sailed the seas for five months in 1987 before it finally disposed of its malodorous cargo back where it started and the "poo-poo choo-choo" filled with Baltimore sewage whose 1989 odyssey ended up back in Baltimore, the "dirt train" is unwanted.

The contaminated cargo originated in 1989 when a train carrying acrylic acid and other chemicals derailed in Freeland, Mich. CSX Transportation of Jacksonville, Fla., cleaned up the mess and...